Yesterday I had the opportunity to meet and photograph a former Olympian at West Point. Knut Hjeltnes (left) was a discus thrower for Norway and competed at three Summer Olympic Games: Montreal in ’76, Moscow in ’80 (boycotted), Los Angeles in ’84 and Seoul in ’88. He’s been an assistant track coach the last 12 years at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Since temperatures were pushing up into the mid-90’s again, I quickly decided to photograph him in the tunnel below the grandstand of their small stadium used for outdoor track competitions. (thank goodness I’d seen the assignment the night before and knew instinctively to prepare my small strobe kit for portraits.) It would’ve been just too hot to make a nice portrait of him out on the track or turf field in the noontime, blazing sun. And besides the oppressive heat and humidity, I knew I’d have a subject with squinting eyes and possibly ugly shadows under his eyes as well. I realistically wanted to avoid a nightmare portrait shoot.
Coach Hjeltnes was totally agreeable to patiently wait the few minutes it took me to assemble my quick & dirty one-light portrait strobe setup and we went to work. I even utilized the empty Gatorade cooler at lower left as a step stool to make a few frames. The practice discus he’s holding was basically the only prop I had to work with, as I ditched the idea in my mind to have him sit on the cooler, holding the discus. The whole shoot, from setup to breakdown took all of 20 minutes… ~cg.
Chet Gordon resides in the lower Hudson Valley region of New York. A photojournalist for more than 25 years, he recently worked as Westchester Magazine's first photo editor, and previously was a staff photographer at four NYC metro area newspapers. He was also a photo editor at the NY Daily News for 5 years. His work has appeared in The New York Times, International Herald-Tribune, USA Today, MailOnline (UK), Army Times, Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, and Popular Photography magazines, among others. He is a career member of the National Press Photographer’s Association (NPPA), and a former board member of the NY Press Photographer’s Association (NYPPA). He served honorably as a U.S. Marine in the mid-1980's, including 2+ years stationed on Okinawa, Japan, and throughout Southeast Asia. A longtime volunteer and travel enthusiast, he accompanies several humanitarian aid clients on their international disaster relief and medical missions. Since 1997, he's worked in several African countries, the Middle East, Central and South America, Eastern Europe, as well as Afghanistan, Haiti, the Russian Federation, and Thailand. He routinely mentors young photographers looking to break into the industry and vacations in Bermuda and Kenya.
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